Category Archives: Leadership

Jul 03 2012
Leadership, Tools

You can’t collaborate without labor

Enterprise solutions are embarking on a collaboration train, offering improved and very usable tools for notifying, sharing, messaging, and decision-making right alongside the traditional business transactions of orders, returns, credit-checks, and reports.

Unfortunately, having the right tools doesn’t fix the bookshelf. You have to use them. You can’t collaborate without some labor. The collaboration journey requires an investment of time. You have to be the I in the team who does the heavy lifting. Let’s call that investment, oh, leadership.

Eventually, another person will benefit from your collaboration efforts* and they’ll join in the conversation, multiplying the collaboration value. Collaboration spreads grass-roots, individual by individual. This is good; you can’t force collaboration any more than you can force labor.

*They’ll also recognize your leadership and you’ll have gained a fan.

Jul 02 2012
Leadership, Learning, Positioning

Some ‘Splaining to do

We’re not here to teach, though we are here to explain.

We take our user interfaces, technology stacks, business processes, data, and reports and present a tasty jambalaya to our audiences.  We take complexity and convey simplicity through a memorable theme and three bullet points.*

We take an audience from “I don’t get it,” to “I want to get it.”

It’s some ‘splaining we do.

*because two aren’t enough and four is too many

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Jun 19 2012
Leadership, Learning, Positioning, Professionalism

Climbing the Spiral Staircase

Every cycle you engage in- win, lose, or draw- you gain experience.

That experience brings out the finer points, the little touches and nuances that make a difference.  A point of positioning here, and understanding of the user’s life there, and tips about using projectors and podiums and whiteboards everywhere.

There’s always another level of competition.  There’s always a better way to convey the message.  There’s always a way to change, to improve.

Keep climbing the spiral staircase up and through the stratosphere.  Otherwise you’re just doing a job.

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Jun 06 2012
Leadership

Things You can Do with Rope

Tug others along

Tie things down

Magic tricks

Climb

Swing

With a fulcrum, increase your leverage

Cross it at the finish line

Make a net

Cut it to set things free

Tug of war

Measure

Create a barrier

Knot it up

Burn yourself badly (ouch!)

Cross impossible ravines

…

In short, you can lead with it.

Just like leadership, each of these things requires you to put some tension on the rope.  And just like leadership, you can’t push anything with it.

May 30 2012
Leadership, Learning, Professionalism, Solutions, Uncategorized

“Well, I guess you’re a manufacturing company.”

Years ago, in a discovery session with a manufacturing company, my peers (manufacturing, planning, and production) poked and prodded as we walked about the facility, asking insightful questions about the customer’s operations, the challenges they faced, how they ran this and that process, when they resorted to manual lists and spreadsheets, when they made decisions with autonomy, when they went up the hierarchy; they even discussed the most economical approach cutting small pieces of steel out of a large piece of scrap.

In short, my peers proved themselves to be not just product and solution experts, but to truly be subject matter experts.

The moment that most impressed me was at the end of the day when, gathered around a table (okay, a folding-table like you get at Sam’s Club) in a conference room just off the manufacturing floor, one of my peers exhaled a sigh and summarized her day with, “Well, I guess you’re a manufacturing company.” Chuckles and agreement all around. Obvious but true.

This is winning the deal in discovery.

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May 24 2012
Leadership, Presentations, Professionalism, Selling

That’s his Prerogative

When all the preparation is done, when all the stories are prepared, when all the data is set for stunning execution, it’s still the prerogative of the key customer in the audience to say something like…

“I don’t need to see the whole day-in-the-life demo and how a user goes about creating this or that- I just have a few key questions.”

That’s his prerogative, and it’s an invitation to step up and play some tough one-on-one.

It’s just you and him.  You’re ready.  It’s what you’ve really been preparing for.  Knock him out with all you’ve got.

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May 01 2012
Leadership, Learning, Professionalism

Motivations in the Life-cycle of Experience

We go through a succession of motivators as we gain experience:

  • Fear of failure
  • Proving yourself
  • Taking risks
  • Being Bold
  • Leadership

Where are you on your journey?

Apr 25 2012
Leadership, Professionalism, Selling, Tools

“Sent from mobile phone. Please excuse any typos.”

No, I won’t.  No excuses.

We are highly paid professionals.  We are the ones the decision makers trust.  We are the front-line representatives of multi-million-billion dollar organizations, asking our customers to invest with us.

Our communications must be clear and void of careless mistakes.

Instead of making preemptive excuses or advertising in your email signature, include your contact information, so your customers can effortlessly reach back to you.

That’s what the signature is for.

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Mar 12 2012
Leadership, Positioning, Solutions, Tools

Three strategies

Evolutionary.  Your product has better features/functions/usability than the competition.  You know these points well and can bring them to the front in demonstrations.  Usability, capability, and ease of access all play a role here.

Revolutionary.  Your product has taken the market expectations and gone a whole generation beyond.  You’re thought leaders, innovators, and the risk-taking customers clamor to be with you.

Visionary… in the eyes of your customer.  You look at their needs and find a way to revolutionize their business.  You bring unique combinations of capabilities (some of them even mundane) together to help them better achieve and define themselves. This is what they start to see in the Revolutionary solutions, but here it’s brought into sharp focus.

Being Visionary is the joy of business.  It is truly the engineering side of Pre-Sales.

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Mar 12 2012
Leadership

“Good luck with that”

Have you ever shared a dream or a goal with someone to have them respond, “good luck with that?”

What fatalism. How cynical.

Prove them wrong.

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